The Future of Poverty

Recently the World Bank stated that climate change may push more than 100 million people into poverty by 2030, and innovations in robotics may eliminate the need for millions of human workers. But how much of this is alarmism, and how much is inescapable fact?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
whiddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
Ben and as always we are here with gosh No

(00:22):
the nick nickname got so long last time we were
podcasts and remember, yeah, we had we had this thing
where we would need trumpets and then we would need somebody.
Oh that was that was going to be a minstrel
with a carpet of some sort. You think it was awesome,
town Noel Brown, I think we can dispense with the
nicknames if you want. I mean, it's okay if if

(00:43):
if something comes up and it's meaningful but don't feel
then you don't have to do it, you know. Well yeah,
I mean that's that's a weird psychological thing, right. It's
always fun to do something when you don't have to.
When when you were a kid, did you ever want
to mow the lawn and then you eventually had to
mow the lawn? Was that just me? Know? It's YouTube? Yeah, Okay,
you see what I'm saying. Well, we're talking about happiness

(01:06):
in a way, so there's a very interesting thing that
happens with happiness. There's a there's a comparative factor to happiness,
and it's very strange. If some you could have two
people write two people. One is a guy making thirty
grand a year doing whatever he does. Give him a
fake job. What do you do? Lawnmower? He's a lawnmower

(01:29):
and uh, one who mows lawns. Yeah, he's a lawnmower
man and he makes thirty thousand dollars a year. If
everybody else and is oh, and there's this other person. Uh,
she makes fifty thou dollars a year. What does she
do now? She makes podcasts? Okay, she makes a lot
of money from Okay, So we've got this podcaster lady

(01:51):
making fifty year and this lawnmower guy making thirty. If
all of the other people at the lawnmowing company make
like twenty five or even twenty eight thousand dollars, this
guy is the king of the mountain. He he is
thrilled to be alive. Things taste sweeter. How do you
find find out what everybody else makes? Let's just say
that for the sake of ok But if the lady

(02:13):
making fifty thou dollars of the podcasting thing, finds out
that her co workers are making you know, fifty thousand,
right or fifty three, even then she is going to
be miserable and unhappy. And that's because for a great
deal of the human species, happiness is so comparative. And

(02:38):
there are other studies about there are other studies about
whether money makes you happy, whether it really buys happiness.
It turns out that that's true up to a certain point,
uh in the u s at least, and then after
that it doesn't matter as much. I mean, what you're
describing to me is I've always thought of it sort
of like that grass is always greener kind of mentality,

(02:58):
you know, sort of like you look at what are
the will have keeping up with the Joneses or the
Smiths or whatever generic American last name you'd like to
use for this analogy, and um, you know, I mean,
un guilty of it, but you definitely have to, like,
it's a good thing to keep in check, keep yourself
in check over because it's very easy to like start
coveting what other people have when you realize at the
end of the day that it wouldn't necessarily make you

(03:20):
happier if you had it. That's a great that's a
great point, because that comparative stuff works a couple of
different ways. Listeners, you probably have had the same experience
that almost every kid has growing up in the West,
where someone one a parent or an authority figure says,
you know, we'll think of the people who have less
than you two, or someone says, uh, you know, it

(03:42):
could be worse, which my mother used to say all
the time, and I just hated it. It can be worse,
doesn't make anything, It doesn't change anything. It could be worse.
Is just like also, you shouldn't be upset about these
horrible things. And and it's strange because when we think
about our unhappy or problems in relation to the larger

(04:03):
field of humanity, we have, um, we have such a disconnect,
you know, Like we we were talking about this briefly
off air, and I think you alluded to it. No,
what's the what what what's the what are the problems?
Oh yeah, we were just discussing problems that we're having
in our daily lives right now. My my main one

(04:23):
is that my kid poops on me occasionally. Us gross,
I don't like that. It's horrible. But really that's one
of my biggest problems right now. I mean, that's messed up.
That is messed up for me to even I don't know.
It makes you feel horrible, and I think it's because
maybe my mom kind of gave me some of the

(04:45):
same things. Not she wasn't doing it for any bad reason.
It's for a really good reason. And think about other
people have empathy. Imagine yourself if you don't have all
the things that you have now. But it definitely weighs
on me pretty heavily. No, the I think that my
problem is are are bad sometimes? Right? And I really
you kind of wallow in what I'm dealing with. But

(05:06):
then if I pull myself out a little bit, I
just realized how ridiculously great I have it. Yeah, I mean, like,
I have a six year old daughter, and the perfect
way to sum up these like first world problems is
to observe the behavior of a six year old. So
she's constantly like, We're in a store and she's like,

(05:26):
I want that thing, and I'm like, why do you
want it? She's like, well, because it looks cool and
because I really I feel as though I need that,
and deserve that, and I have to say things like
I never thought I would be this, but I am, like,
let's why don't you not worry about what you don't
have and just think about what you do have and
appreciate that, you know, and let's let's go from there.

(05:47):
That's amazing. It doesn't work though, not not not hearing it,
and um and you know, I mean, she's not a
super tantrum type kid, but she definitely you know, she's
got some some some one. I'm not giving it. I'm
not gonna know. No, she's really smart though, and she's

(06:07):
kind of villainous. One time she told me I have
made a powerful enemy when I wouldn't give her a fanta.
Oh wow, that never happened. And somebody, um did make
a powerful enemy recently though, didn't they. Yeah, I'm still
kind of sore about it. I don't want to go
into it. No, I you could event maybe when I'm

(06:28):
in a better place to talk about emotionally. But listeners,
just you just to be absolutely clear. The thing that
we're alluding to, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme
of problems. We are today talking about something that's related
to an earlier podcast. We did right. We did the
future of inequality. Now it came back to do the

(06:53):
future of poverty. And so first we have to ask ourselves,
you know what what is poverty? People? We talked about
how people Okay, full disclosure for everybody. Uh the slight
jump you just heard was and edit because off air
off air met you convinced me that if everybody is

(07:14):
talking about first of all problem, I should talk about
one too. It's a little difficult because I am furious.
No you might have to edit parts of this because
I don't know if I can hold it in. So
I think somebody stole some mail from me. I was
ordering full disclosure, was ordering some comics, uh, graphic novel
set from a series that Noel turned us onto called

(07:35):
Lock and Key, and it's fantastic and is waiting days.
And I'm pretty sure somebody. I'm pretty sure somebody stole it.
And there's this strange um, you know, the bureaucracy in
that movie Brazil, That's what I'm going through. Try like
I have the packet packing tracking number, and I have
all my bureaucratic red tape ducks in a row. And

(07:59):
these people, these people, uh, they just push you. You
know it's it's no help, and and well it says
that there's saying oh well, then it says it was
delivered because you came and picked it up, And I said, no,
I was with myself the whole time. I didn't go anywhere.
You know, there's not like sleepwalking. You're right anyway, I'm

(08:21):
not a somnambulist or whatever. But that's a horrible feeling
where you really thought you were gonna get it, You're
gonna get to get back into the story that you've
been waiting for, and now it's like, but it's such
a stupid problem to have, you know, considering what what
I had, This story already encounters so many things that

(08:42):
we already have. Right, already have a phone where it's
possible to call a post office, right, already have a
phone where it's possible to call the people are supposed
to be shipping it. Already had a little bit of
extra scratch to get some graphic novels of all things
Internet connection, an Internet connections on prime account, not to
mention a shipping service that can send you things. Oh yeah, totally,

(09:05):
you're right. So I was being very small minded and
bradish and stupid and spoiled. We talked about being a
little hard on yourself, but well, we talked about real
problems before when we talked about the future of inequality
in a previous podcast that you should check out. You
don't have to listen to it to understand what we're

(09:26):
talking about today, but it will help sort of paint
the picture. So people spend a lot of time asking
how much money a person needs to live, Right, you've
seen those commercials. We've all seen their commercials. You know
it for a dollar a day, right, Yeah, and uh,
this leads us to ask, what is poverty? What's poverty?

(09:49):
How is it defined? Who's defining it? I mean, in general,
I guess we all basically have understanding of part of
what poverty is, um but you know, in general terms,
it's the state of being poor not possessing adequate resources,
whether in terms of money or basic needs that need
to be meant such as food, water, shelter, medical services. Yeah. Yeah,

(10:09):
that's that's a good ways say it, because this doesn't
one person's poor is another person's you know, wealth or
another person's pension. Right, Yes, it's it's a wildly different
across the world. Well, yeah, That's the one of the
hardest things that we found in researching this is that
it's there are institutions that are global that are trying

(10:32):
to kind of say, well, if we look at poverty globally,
what does it look like? And then you're having to
go down to each separate country, each separate region in
each country and say, well, what does poverty mean here,
and then trying to put say a dollar amount like
the U n does or the World Bank tries to
put a dollar amount a day for how much a
person must make or must not make to be considered

(10:58):
poor or not. Right, Yeah, because their their degrees of
poverty as well. What we're talking about specifically will be
extreme poverty. And this is measured, as you said, met
in absolute terms, meaning people living on less than a
dollar a day. Uh. It used to be a dollar
twenty five a day and then went up to a
dollar and ninety cents a day. That's what the World

(11:19):
Bank uses as a benchmark for these poverty statistics, and
the estimates of this very widely. But ladies and gentlemen,
we are happy to say there is good news at
least at the beginning of this, which is that over
time the percent of the population with extreme poverty has
been in decline. Yeah, that's right. One of the one

(11:41):
of the big numbers we were looking at was that
in nineteen eight one, according to the World Bank, uh,
there were I think of human beings and the global
population were considered to be below the poverty line. Then
in nineteen it will is thirty seven percent. Then jump

(12:03):
all the way up to two thousand twelve, and we're
currently at twelve point seven percent. But even that's declining,
you know. That's yes, that's two twelve and we're I
think the most recent estimates. Let's see the fourteen percent
in two thousand and fifteen. According to that is the

(12:27):
MDG Report Summary, which is the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
That's their little summary from the last year that that
was we should probably talk about what the millennium development
goals are. If I'm gonna jump that out, well, yeah,
let's talk about it. So the United Nations on the
at the suggestion of the then Secretary at the time

(12:48):
of Blue Wis Copia Nan, decided that they would set
forth these broad goals, and one of those goals was
the eradication of extreme poverty they've at some of those
benchmarks there and they're still working on it. But what
we're talking about now, when like, as we kick around
these statistics, is that if this were a game, the

(13:12):
rules of the game are changing while the game is uh,
while the game is a foot, you know. So we
see that, let me see that poverty doesn't necessarily mean
the same um, the same thing across the planet. But
we also see that despite the wide misunderstanding and some

(13:34):
of the hidden agendas are alleged hidden agendas that will
be discussing here. Uh, despite all this stuff, and despite
the dwindling of extreme poverty, the numbers are still the
numbers are still bad. Not being in extreme poverty does
not mean you are in any way, shape or form

(13:57):
necessarily doing well. Oh just means that you are not
extremely impoverished. So so let's talk about some of those factors.
If we talked about the future of poverty, we talk
also about the factors affecting poverty, which are not necessarily
what you might think, ladies and gentlemen. We're talking about

(14:18):
the big stuff, right, One of the factors that I
hadn't really thought about, and how much affect it would
have on poverty globally is climate change and how it's
going to basically, I mean, it's gonna make a lot
more people more poor. If you think about rising sea levels,
if you think about weather and catastrophes that are going

(14:40):
to be occurring at higher and higher frequencies, or at
least that are projected to take place at higher frequencies,
I would think too it would affect like agrarian economies.
Oh yeah, droughts, fires, there are all of these things
that are you know, at least according to the science,
being affected by global climate change. Well there's a yeah,
that's a a point. There's a double whammy there as well.

(15:02):
Like I know that the ideas, the the ideas circling
around environmental catastrophes are often politicized. So let's just look
at it from a geographical place. Here's why I called
the double whammy because the areas of the world that
are being affected most by these things are typically in
developing regions of the world, which means that there's not

(15:25):
as much infrastructure, uh the states involved and the people
affected don't have some of the same safeguards or safety nets.
For instance, in Bangladesh, there's gonna be a lot of
problems with flooding. Yeah, there are already a lot of problems,
and we kind of saw like what there is to

(15:45):
be done internally in Bangladesh and what kind of safeguards
there are, and I mean, it's only going to get worse,
and uh, you know, some Pacific nations are already worried
about sinking under the water within our life times. This
could create something that I think is very strange and
I never thought this would happen, something called climate refugees,

(16:09):
where you have to flee where you currently live in
order to either be at a higher elevation, to be
a where a place, a place where food is available.
Right Like to your point, No, if there's an igrarian
economy and people depend upon that for sustenance and livelihood,
then when that land is unerable, then they have to go.

(16:29):
They can't. There's not another option. And just quickly specifically,
that study was saying that there there could be another
one million people who I guess are included or added
to the numbers of those who are extreme in extreme
poverty in the next fifteen years, especially in Sub Saharan
Africa and South Asia. Those are the places that are

(16:51):
most at risk right, yes, And with that continuing, I
think we should also note the future of qualities skyrocketing
in certain parts of the world. Our country included on
that list. But there's there's this other thing that maybe
we'll make for a different show in the future, but
we should talk about it now. Technology you guys, times

(17:14):
you change yea, and a couple of things that this
the curred to me around technology, And I was listening
to an NPR piece on Marketplace a couple days ago,
and I wish I could remember a little bit more
specifics about it, but um, they reference a stat that
was really interesting to me that folks in lower income
brackets are more likely to get into traffic accidents that

(17:35):
can cause them serious health problems because they don't necessarily
have access to cars with the newest safety features. So
if you're not making as much money, you might be
driving an older car. You might let things lapse as
far as maintenance of that car. And you also might
be in a car that doesn't have any of the
newer like you know, sensors that keep you that tell
you when you're out of your lane, or like you know,

(17:56):
backup cameras, things like that that tend to add, you know,
to the safety of vehicles. And then so I was
googling that to try to figure out what the study was,
and I actually came upon this blog on the World
Bank website that said a huge factor, or at least
a factor. It's a lot larger than you might think
in uh, poverty is automotive accidents. And so that sort

(18:18):
of ties in because a large number of people can
actually lose their jobs after serious car accidents for a
number of reasons, whether it's you know, health, they can't
perform functions required to do their jobs anymore. Maybe they
weren't insured properly and they are now dealing and dead,
dealing with all kinds of medical bills, and it goes on.
So it takes longer for victims of road crashes to

(18:39):
find jobs because the you know, the criteria is gonna
be much more specific if they actually have suffered serious injuries.
And then you know, there are these huge income gaps
between victims of traffic crashes and non victims. So if
for example, you are at fault in a traffic accidents
and then you don't have adequate insurance, you can totally
ruin your life. You could lose your house con spiral

(19:01):
out of control. And I mean, I think that is
that definitely ties into the technology factor. Maybe not in
the way that you were going with it, but I
think it's definitely something I think about. It's interesting. I
think it ties in perfectly because it is something that
that we don't consider, and it is into the future
of poverty because in some parts of the world you
have to have some sort of transportation. You can have

(19:24):
a car, right and a cell phone and still being
extremely poor, especially in a country where it's a necessity
to have those two things. And the other thing that
goes on with technology here is increasing automation. Are we
going to get to a point where most of the
jobs that are done by humans now just don't need

(19:46):
to We don't need those people to work. You know.
It is very strange that I was actually looking at
Marshall Brain's website for this, who is the founder of
how stuff works dot com, the site for which we work.
He's our Dave Thomas, Yeah, exactly, Mr Marshall Brain. Well,
he he writes about this stuff a lot about automation

(20:07):
and robotics and the future what it's gonna look like.
And the first thing that he says, that's going to
be the first job that's going to be driven out
through automation. He says, our truck drivers, because he thinks
it's gonna they're going to be automated trucks just going
all over the United States and delivering everything. Unfortunately, I mean,

(20:29):
it does seem like that's one of those things that
is just a matter of time. I mean, we know
that self driving cars exist that are you know, in
beta testing, that are pretty damn good, and you know,
you just um scale that technology and you know, put
out a fleet. Well, but but the thing is, uh,

(20:50):
that job of being a truck driver, Uh, that's actually
a fairly I mean it's not amazingly lucrative, but it's
a pretty darn good, steady job that you can get it.
And it's also a very kind of American job if
you think about it. I mean, it's a very like
kind of grassroots kind of like you know, working man's
type job. Well, yeah, it's so let's take these three

(21:12):
large concepts and let's paint the worst hypothetical picture. It
doesn't have to necessarily be in the States, but let's
say a person, um, I don't give him a name,
and if I use your name accidentally, listeners, I promise
it's not on purpose. So let's say Sam, right, sure, Sam.

(21:32):
So let's say that Sam grew up on a farm.
Sam grows up on a farm and becomes a truck driver, right,
And this is still when people can drive their own trucks. Uh.
But Sam's not doing that well because it's not paying
that well. Right, and Uh, he can't afford the insurance,

(21:54):
the the extra price you have to pay just since
private life to have a manually driven car, which is
going to be more expensive, right, and that also means
that he's at fault if an accident occurs. So an
accident occurs and he can't Uh, he can't get back
into the trekking industry because he has that one strike
and trucks are increasingly automated. They don't need He's in

(22:17):
a John Henry situation. They don't need a human driver.
So he goes back to his childhood farm, but it's
not there because the desertification has occurred or whatever in
the land as eroded. It's no longer arable. And then
in this dystopian future our Boys, Sam ends up joining

(22:39):
millions of other people who have no job, there's no
place that will employ them, and we would live in
this sounds like such a sci fi story like Black Mirror,
but we would live in a place where the only
people with power and the only people with jobs are
the people who own the machines and repair them. That's
one reason the Black Mirrors so excellent is because it's

(23:00):
incredibly appreciate in that way. Like I mean, the scenarios
that it depicts are based on very real problems and
very real technological situations that are reaching critical mass and
that could eventually lead to some dystopium kind of situation.
And the way you just describe that, it's interesting to
me because I think if this is like sort of

(23:20):
like a one day there are truck drivers and one
day there are no more truck drivers. But you're right,
it would be like a more gradual process where people
would gradually it would be more and more difficult to
pay for the insurance and to actually, you know, do
it the old way, sort of like with cabs and
Uber right now, for example. That's a that's a pretty
good point and in a disturbing point too. So with

(23:42):
but think, guys, not all hope is lost for Sam
and his countrymen, because he lives in a place where, yes,
there's a crumbling infrastructure, maybe, yes there's a corrupt government
and there's not enough uh employment to go around. But
what if a friendly international agency dedicated entirely to the

(24:03):
elimination of extreme poverty showed up and said, hey, we'll
help you out. Here's the safety net, here's the safety
that you wanted. Just pay us back and oh, just
a couple we'll give you some money. It's a loan,
no stress, just a couple of things go along with
the loans, standard business. Wait, man, are you talking about

(24:24):
like a mafia asque organization? He oh no, uh, we
are talking about the World Bank. And we'll get to
them in a moment, right after a word from our sponsor.

(24:45):
Here's where it gets crazy. What if the World Bank
has a different purpose. I love that. I thought we
were in an episode video episode just then. I mean,
I'm being serious you guys, Well, I mean, what can
you give us a little bit more background in the
World Bank? And then we've kind of touched on it
throughout this episode, but I could use a little bit
of a primer. Yeah, okay, So the World Bank is

(25:07):
an international financial institution what they do is they give
loans to developing countries with the idea that they will
increase the economic growth of that country. So this would
be stuff like building damn for instance, here's a loan
to build a project of great infrastructure, right, and these

(25:29):
loans are attached often with conditions. In these conditions are
meant to better the economic state of the country. So,
for instance, corruption is a big problem in a lot
of developing countries. I mean, it's a big problem everywhere,
but it's a big problem in developing countries. Different types
of corruption, different types, that's right, And what the Bank

(25:52):
will do in order to combat that, for instance, would say, well,
we're taking we need to privatize some of your industries
because right now there's state running corrupt, which is a
you know, is an unfortunately common problem. So with their
official goal being the reduction of poverty through this kind

(26:13):
of capital investment in capital programs, they are and they
are a part of the United Nations. They're part of
the World Bank Group, which is part of the United
Nations Development Group. And they've had some hits, they've had
some misses. Uh, They've been accused at times of pursuing
a free market ideology that flies in the face of results,

(26:36):
So making the error of a lot of passionate, motivated,
smart people, which is to say, I know what will work,
and so I'll do this because I know the result,
even though I haven't done it before, or even though
I've done it before in the exact same way and
it had a horrible result, I'm going to do it
again because it might work this time. It might work

(26:57):
this time. Well in part of this too, to be
completely fair, and these are huge problems, you know what
I mean. This is not this is not something that
any group could get right all the time. Well, yeah,
you're trying on a global scale to fix economies, I mean,
and that's I don't know if there are many more

(27:19):
lofty goals besides getting humans to Mars. Are they trying
to fix the economy? Well, that's the question. There are
people on let's say the outskirts who would say no,
they're actually trying to perhaps destabilize certain areas of the
world and to go in and maybe gain a little
more control for global institution like the World Bank. Again,

(27:44):
that's on the fringes. M hmm. Can we circle back
to our hypothetical farmer situation. Sam, let's check it on Sam. Okay.
So uh yeah, so Sam is one of the people affected,
and he's been displaced his truck. Our job is no more,
right is trucker job is no war? The farm's gone

(28:07):
nothing nothing tumbleweeds man. And so the World Bank comes
in that there aren't any roads, they're all in disrepair.
There could be uh some potential to make new farm
land with some irrigation projects, right, and we need money
for that, right, We need money for that, and we
need expertise. We need engineers because a lot of the

(28:28):
engineers have left the country for better paying jobs elsewhere.
There was a brain drain. So the World Bank comes
in and says, uh, says, well, we'll give you this one.
We'll build this infrastructure project and we will make we
will increase the GDP of the country right at the
gross domestic product. We will uh kickstart the economic growth.

(28:52):
This country will go from stagnating to developing again. And
one day, who knows, baby, you could be Singapore. I
don't know. And that's I don't know. If Pacino is
in the World Bank, is that the benchmark? So the target? Uh, well,
you know, the Singapore is a little authoritarian. But it's
it's a pretty clean country apparently. So here's where things

(29:15):
start to go wrong. They say, well, while we're building
this damn uh and this irrigation project that's going to
bring this farm land back. Uh, you, Sam and all
your neighbors have to move get out. It's we need
this area to work, right, I mean, you get out here?

(29:35):
Are we gonna at least pay you out? Though? Is
that how we roll? Ideally? But what if Sam says
I don't want to go, then Sam will be forcibly relocated.
At least this happened before where where people were forced
to get out. And yeah, it can happen in any situation.
You know, a state can in many cases impose um,

(29:58):
impose itself upon have it properly. Right, happens in the States. Yeah,
what's it called imminent domain? Ye a, k A. The
reason that the roads can widen into your yard. Right.
So here are some of the criticisms that people will say, uh,
including and these aren't all. These aren't necessarily the typical

(30:21):
idea of of anarchist or a conspiracy not. One of
the more ardent critics of the World Bank is its
former chief economist, Joseph STIGLETZ, I thought you were gonna
say Stalin, former Justice Stalin. Uh, So this is you'll hear.
You'll hear people argue on both sides. You'll hear some people.

(30:44):
I read a very interesting thing where a guy accused
the World Bank of being a socialist collectivist thing, and
then other criticisms. Of course, more criticism with it being
a uh too far into like a neoliberal idea of
the free market economy, right, that the invisible hand will

(31:05):
guide people to civilization. But Stiglett said that the policies
the bank implements happened too quickly and uh, it's referred
to as shock therapy, but it's in the wrong Uh,
it's in the wrong sequence. Uh. And that the bank
ends uprising g d P over anything else. So if

(31:27):
there's a higher g DP, that doesn't necessarily when the
economy is good for a country, it doesn't necessarily mean
the economy is good for the people in that country. Right.
And I'm not I'm not arguing for any political thing.
That's just a fact. And so Stiglets is saying that
these two ideas should not be conflated. And what he's

(31:50):
saying is he's saying there's a maybe a degree of
honest error in the implementation in these policies. But then
other people are saying, no, the UH International UH, that
the i m F and the World Bank function as
these tools of control, as as a way to keep

(32:12):
keep other states in subservient positions or even to practice
resource extraction. And it's strange because the I m F.
In UH, the i m F and the World Bank
cracked something called the Washington Consensus, which is where they
decided that the World Bank would also institute these policies
of privatization, deregulations, stuff like that. Stiglets objects to it

(32:34):
and says that it hasn't um it hasn't worked out,
that it's more of a of people wanting a nice
idea to be true and maybe they're doing it the
wrong way. He for instance, says that the Chilean success
a lot of people who are proponents of the Washington
Sensus believe that Chile is a success story economically because

(32:57):
of World Bank I m F policies. Stiglets, however, says
that it's because they had state ownership of key industries,
particularly it's copper industries, so the state still owned the resources,
and of course other people wildly disagree that that's why
it happened. But that's the thing about the dismal science
of economics. You know, people can argue back and forth

(33:21):
all day. I can see that argument where if if
Chilia owned they owned the copper industry in their country,
they could use money coming in from that to perhaps
bolster certain parts of their economy, right, helped some things
out internally, rather than having this giant loan from the
World Bank that they're having to pay off anyway. So

(33:42):
this goes back to an earlier thing we talked about
before too, which was do banks run the world? Yes? Yes,
that you're you believe in this. I see the strings everywhere, man.
I think there's a lot of undoe influence there. But
it's you always seen that it's difficult outside of apparently Iceland,

(34:02):
it's difficult to regulate banking industries. But I will also
say that the World Bank, in my opinion, in my opinion,
the World Bank has hard working people and just like
in any other industry, and they're trying they're trying to
make the world a better place. But if we look
at the future of poverty, right, and we ask ourselves

(34:24):
why there is a larger concentration of poverty in certain
places like Sub Saharan Africa is actually gaining more impoverished
people while the rest of the world is doing a
little bit better and better and better. And so I'm wondering,
and I'm asking you guys, and I'm asking you listening
as well, do you think that the World Bank is

(34:46):
a tool of some sort of overarching thing? Right? We
talked about in our video episode. We talked about different
authors who alleged that the World Bank is um we're
hand in hand with intelligence agencies like well builded damn
for you or you could probably do a better villain voice.

(35:11):
I had a damn vile I was just kind of
piggybacking on, you know, source material. It's a fascinating point.
We're virgin on here. However, because the World Bank has
represents excuse me, over a hundred and eighty countries, however,
it's controlled by a small amount of countries. The president

(35:35):
of the World Bank traditionally has always been American, and
the president of the i m F traditionally has always
been European. And a governing structure of the bank is
not democratic. They have this. They have this an interesting
idea because the funding members of the Bank worked out
a deal where it's one dollar one vote. Therefore, the
more money you contribute to the World Bank, the more

(35:57):
control you have over the oreganization. That's why China and
India might represent round the world's population but only have
five percent of the votes at the World Bank, whereas
six countries the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, the UK and
France control about of the decision making power and it's

(36:19):
not required to reveal its internal documents. Again, if it was,
but it doesn't have to. Uh. Those why I keep talking.
I've got to apologize for this. I keep talking about
the loans as though there is one kind of loan,
but there are three. The first is a project loan,
and that's where we talked about damns and power plants
and copper minds and stuff. Uh. The second is a

(36:42):
sector adjustment loan. That's that's where they support specific policy
changes in an industrial sector, for instance. And then the third,
the one that you hear a lot about when it
comes to those changes of the regulars, d regulation, privatization,
and so on, that is the structural Adjustment program and

(37:07):
short term support and exchange for major policy changes. So
I don't know, I know this is kind of dry,
but this ties into the future of poverty because we're
looking at a world within your lifetime, listeners, We're looking
at a world where it's quite possible, it's quite possible

(37:28):
that poverty becomes eliminated if if this group is actually
pursuing their goals, you know what I mean. And there
are a lot of NGOs trying to do the same thing,
non governmental organizations. But what do you guys think, Like,
do you think the critics have some grain of truth

(37:49):
in their criticism? Is the World Bank a wolf in
sheep's clothing? Well, there's a lot of fear about global
organizations like this. And we we spoke about the Millennial
Development Goals that the U n had put forward in
two thousand that lasted up until two thousand fift and
this year they got replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals.

(38:12):
And I'm just gonna read some of these off just
to give you an idea of the let's say, the
goals for good that are being put forth by the
United Nations. One no poverty, that's the one that we're
talking about, and that was number one at the top
of the Millennium Development Goals, which was and back then
it was eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Now it's just

(38:35):
no poverty. We're gonna kill it. It's done. Uh. Number
two is zero hunger, which is really good. Uh. They
want to look at good health and well being, quality education,
gender equality, clean water and sanitation, all the way down
to climate action, um reduced inequality throughout the world. I mean,

(38:56):
these are some huge, lofty goals, but as we you
could see from the Millennium Development Goals, if they did
pretty well at least, who knows if they the u
N actually did all of the things to cause this
in the World Bank, but still having a global organization
with those goals and and actively pursuing to rid the

(39:18):
world of these terrible things, I mean, I think it's
pretty great. But on the same side and the other
side of that coin, I think it is probably not
going to be very effective on a global scale. But yeah,
and is are these institutions make changing the world or
are they just enforcing a neo called a colonial status quo? Right,

(39:39):
that's a huge possible kind of how it feels to
me in some sense. Yeah, I guess it's just sometimes
it's just a matter of sort of shifting the status
quo so that it suits those in power and sort
of like allowing them to make it malleable to their
own ends. And you know, I mean, I hate to
sound cynical, but a lot of times when I see
these big organizations trying to make these big change is

(40:00):
and they involve you know, kind of backroom deal type scenarios,
it makes me wonder, you know, where, um their motivations
actually lie. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And then also it's
it's tough to guess because there's obsfurcation of the internal documents, right,

(40:20):
And it's also tough to guess because it's a new
kind of thing. It's it's it's one of the first
kind of entities doing this for this long, right. But
they've been accused of, uh doing They've been accused of
pursuing ulterior motives repeatedly. And then I'm sure there are
multiple sides of the story because of course the bank

(40:42):
is dealing with corrupt places at the time, but the
allegation that the bank itself is corrupt is uh, I'm
just gonna say it's not crazy. It's not crazy. That
people with a lot of power would play some underhanded
I mean, and corruption begets more corruption. You know, if
you're working in a situation where you can get away

(41:03):
with something because of you know, the status quo of
that particular situation, certain type of person might take advantage. Yeah,
that's a good point too, So I guess though, we
have to look at it in a great balanced scale.
On one side we have the good that's being done right,
and then on the other side we have a lot
of sketchy stuff. So when do we make the call

(41:28):
about when? When do we make the call about whether
this is a good thing or not. And listeners, especially
if you're listening in foreign country, what is your country's
experience these institutions? We want to hear from you and
just show you how much. Oh man, I wish we
had time to check all of that listener mail from
the last episode. Oh we have, we got so much.

(41:56):
I actually have a list of all of the people
who wrote to us such a good I'm just gonna
read them out at some point. Do we have a selection.
I have one in particular that I want to shout out.
But thank you everyone for writing a writing to us
about sleep sleep paralysis, night terrors, shadow people, all of
that stuff, all kinds of just really interesting stories about

(42:17):
sleep and what you experience when it happens. Because sleep
to us and dreaming, I think the three of us
in this room, it's a fascinating subject already. Just the
idea that we we deactivate for hours and hours and
hours at a time every day. It's still weird to us.
But thank you Jessica, Liz, jama A, j Dwayne, Andy, Michael,

(42:41):
Sean and Sean O, Vanessa, Tom Ellie, Jasper, George Lacy,
and finally Yahya, who did something that I'm not aware
anyone else has done so far on this show. It's
a first. She sent us a voice message. She was
listening to our show in her car and she pulled
over to the side the road and decided to record

(43:01):
a message and sent it to us. I thought that
was pretty awesome, So, uh, we're just gonna go ahead
and listen to the story that she's telling about an
experience she had back in the day. Hey guys, So
I was listening to the Sleep Paralysis podcast and while driving,
and I heard the story about the guy sleeping with

(43:25):
the two girls and then um having a weird little episode.
And I remember a while ago kind of a similar
thing happening to me. So I used to live in
my family in a two story house and then there
was like, um kind of like three stairs that go
down to a lower level, I guess you would say.

(43:47):
And my brother, my older brother, he lived in the
room down at the lower level of the house. Now
he kept complaining about, like, weird thing is happening to him,
or he would uh, you know, wake up. And one
at one point he's seen like something extremely like demonic

(44:08):
in the corner of his room and and I was
just like, you know, I don't believe you at all,
Like this is just crazy. I don't believe you. And
the way his room was set up was there was
like a family room downstairs, and then um, right connected
to the family room was his bedroom. And I remember
being like half asleep on the couch and he looks
over at me and he's like, hey, um, are you

(44:29):
sure you want to sleep down here? And I'm like,
uh yeah, why And he's just like, um okay, well
something's gonna happen. And I'm just like, um okay, like this,
I just was not believing him at all. In any
of the stories. He said. Anyways, I fall asleep, and
I don't know how long I was asleep for, but

(44:49):
I do remember like opening my eyes and it was
it was a weird sensation to like be awake but
not be awake and not be able to move or
get up when you want to get up. It was
just the weirdest feeling. It's never happened to me before.
And I remember, Um, this man like standing um behind me,

(45:10):
so I could hear him. I could hear where he
was standing, but I couldn't see him. And he was saying,
you know, I know you, Um, you don't know me.
A lot of people they say, like when they see me,
it's really um. It's frightens them and they get really scared.
And then he said, I've been watching you for a while,
and he showed me like a bunch of pictures of me,
like just doing everyday things or like getting out of

(45:33):
the shower, like really weird. And then he goes, so
do you want to look at me? And I I
said no, I don't, why would I want to? And
I just remember like squeezing my eyes shut and like
feeling the weirdest force like on my head, like pushing
me down and trying to like open my eyes, and
it was like the scariest um, like I'm shaking thinking

(45:54):
about it right now, and then I just kept trying
to resist, and finally like I woke up and I
ran upstairs and now, um, look my mother up at
the time, and I told her what had happened, and
she's just like shocked, doesn't know how to react, and
she's like, well, let's go get your brother and see
how he's doing. And while we were walking downstairs, he's
rushing upstairs and he's freaking out, and you know, we're like,

(46:17):
what happened? And he's like, I just remember um sleeping
and just feeling completely drained. And I could hear in
the next room a man uh talking to Yahya about something.
I couldn't understand what she was he was saying, but
I heard how like deep his voice wasn't it freaked
me out. I just was drained of energy. And then

(46:39):
I write, when I colde wake up, I woke up
and ran upstairs. So take it how you want it,
but that was the weirdest, weirdest thing that has ever
happened to me. And I think that what really validated
it for me was the fact that my brother also
heard what was going on in the other room, So
I know something happened that night. I don't know exactly
what it was, but I just wanted to say, like,

(47:02):
I don't do drugs or like mess, I really don't
even drink, So I I just thought I would get
it out there and it was. Um, it's kind of
a weird story, so hard for me to like write
it in an email on the side of the road,
but I thought i'd let you guys know I love
your podcast, keep it up, thank you. Uh yeah, that
I don't know. It seems like a creepy experience. I
wouldn't I wouldn't want to go through that. I wonder

(47:25):
if it happened any other time though, or something similar
to that. She says it that was pretty much it,
But I don't know. Do you think the brother was
messing with her? Oh? I don't know, but maybe we'll
hear from the brother also. Also, I love the I
love that people are sending in audio files. If you,
if you would like to do that, we'd love to

(47:46):
hear from you. So I guess I want to follow
that up. I've got three Um, Okay, I guess no mind. Yeah.
The first one is much along the same lines of
of Yah Yah's audio message. UM, I just kind of
wanted to show that we got a pretty cool collection
that looked at both that that's sort of the good
examples of both sides of this sleep paralysis discussion. Yeah,
a little variety. So here's one um from Jessica and

(48:11):
she describes her first experiences. Thus, first time I experienced
sleep paralysis, UM. I was taking a nap after class
and preparing for a late shift at work when I
quote awoke end quote. I couldn't move, but I could
see my room as I was laying in my bed.
I was on my side and could see multiple white
shadows were quickly floating across my room, back and forth

(48:34):
and disappearing through the walls. I was petrified and wanted
to run and scream, but could not move and had
trouble breathing. At this point in my life, I had
no idea what had happened and figured it was just
a very, very vivid nightmare. A few weeks later, I
had a similar episode. I was in the same exact position,
except this time there was an attict door in the
ceiling of my room. The attic door partly opened and

(48:56):
things were being thrown out of it, and I even
saw an arm again, very terrifying, and I couldn't move
or make a sound, and my chest felt tight. The
recurring thing something on your chest, pressing down, pushing the
life out of you. Now that I look back at
the situation, I don't know what to think of it.
There were so many factors, scientific and supernatural that affected

(49:18):
my life. So now I want to say I kind
of wanted to follow up Matts with this one, sort
of that fear terror kind of scenario, and now I've
got a couple that sort of show a different angle
on it. Um, largely because both of these folks report
very specific sleep brows of situations like we talked about,

(49:40):
but they are kind of at peace with them, and
I thought that was really interesting. So this first one
comes from George, and UM, forgive me if I take
on a bit of a voice when I read this.
He was wonderful. He has wonderful, uh, very compelling prose here, gentlemen,
I like it. I understand you live busy lives, so
I will endeavor to keep this concise. My name is George,

(50:00):
and I assumed from the episode on sleep paralysis you
may be interested in the first hand story on the matter.
I'll start by saying this has happened to me many times,
and I'm a firm believer. It is just a crazy
and amazing interplay between our brain and body. Some of
my experiences have seemed very dark or sinister in nature,
but it was only in the very beginning I thought
they were otherworldly. I'm not gonna read the whole thing
is pretty long email, but I'm going to read his

(50:22):
first example here, the first occurrence I can remember in
sharp detail. I was twenty three years old, living in
San Diego and attending my son Art Technical School, having
been in the U. S. Navy for just over a year.
It was like most of the classic stories. I felt
fully awake and unable to move when I came to
sense a dark intent in the room with me. I
could feel something crawling up from the foot of my

(50:42):
bed and very suddenly and intensely pressing down on my chest,
as if trying to force all the air for my
lungs and crush me. The feeling of being completely immobile,
suffering what you think is impending death but at the
same time, fully mentally awake and screaming in your mind
is such a foreign experience in our mundane daily lives

(51:02):
that it borders on the unexplainable. Simply said, it is
terrifying on a level that makes you feel like a
little child again, hoping your mother or father will rush
in and chase away the darkness. Wonderful. Here's where it
gets interesting. To sum it all up, I am one
of those weirdos that actually enjoys when this happens to me.

(51:22):
George's words, not mine. I quickly dropped the notion that
I was being haunted and grew to see it more
as an extension of a lucid dreaming state, living in
a place and time where everything has a logical purpose
and science rules the day. It's fun to have the
rules of reality bent a little because your brain thinks
you were awake when you're really in a sleep Limbo.

(51:43):
I love the podcast, respectfully, George. I love that, George,
because it makes me feel less bad about wanting to
experience it. And I think it's interesting because he he has,
He sees both sides of the coin through experience. You know,
he first has it and and he um can't explain
it away, and it's probably leaning towards more of it

(52:04):
being like a real supernatural event of some kind. And
then the more he experiences it, the more it starts
to fascinate him. And then the more he realizes this is,
you know, an extension of his mind and he is
experiencing it and it's something that you wouldn't normally experience.
So I, you know, he's not taking that for granted.
I think that's pretty awesome. It's beautifully rational. And so

(52:25):
for my second one UM, this person asked to remain anonymous,
so I'm just going to read one of his or
her experiences. I had my first shadow person experience when
I was about fifteen at a summer camp. I was
sleeping in the top bunk in a room with eight
other people, and suddenly I opened my eyes and saw
a black shadow floating over me. I was startled, but
unlike the panicked reaction of many others, my next feeling

(52:46):
was a complete certainty that this entity was watching over
me like a mother and making sure I was okay.
A second later, it dissolved away and I went back
to sleep. Another night at camp, I woke up very
suddenly and saw a similar shadowy figure in the opposee
at corner of the room. I still get these ones
in a while, and it's strange, but I'm not afraid
at all. I don't be afraid. I don't think so either.

(53:08):
I mean, you know, you can look at it so
many different ways you can. I like this kind of
Guardian Angel version of it. I mean, you know, I mean,
even if it's associated with kind of a negative experience,
I think it's interesting to be able to see both
sides of something like that. That's why I liked George
and this anonymous person's letters. Wow, you know, I when
we did this episode, I didn't know that it would

(53:31):
strike a chord with so many folks out there listening.
Some of the most YouTube comments we've ever gotten. Really yeah,
of people just saying, hey, yes, I've experienced this. I
remember when this happened to me the first time. And
as far as the podcast goes, the largest number of
letters that I've seen generated from a single episode. And
unfortunately now is the time Matt, Noel and I have

(53:52):
to mosey on out of here. Well, I don't know
are we gonna mosey We're gonna sneak. No, I'm gonna
drive home as fast as I can. There is poop
in my baby's diaper and I can smell it from here.
You I need to change that diaper, you guys, that's
so weird, man, what I mean? I get it, but
it's just you know, you guys don't have that. You
need to get some sleep, buddy. I've been changing. I've

(54:14):
been changing my own diapers for years. But on a
on a serious note, thank you so much to everybody listen.
Thank you even more to everybody wrote in. If you
would like to send an audio file of a story,
then please do. Uh we we'd love to check it out.
All the stuff we said earlier applies and the most
important part of the show. Do you have a topic

(54:36):
idea for us? Is there something that you think is stuff?
They don't want you to know this? This is your
show as much as it is ours, and all of
our best suggestions come from you. So go ahead and
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bit further away from being fired. Yes, absolutely, orkn ospiracy

(55:00):
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at stuff they don't want you to know dot com.
And if you want to send us an email, especially
with an attachment of an audio file, you can send
that to conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. From
more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot

(55:24):
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff